criscolumbus
Cadet
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2018
- Messages
- 28
I am getting a hankering to build a river boat for skinny water.
Years gone by have had several boats but all my operations previously have been deep water skiing and such. Have had lots of fun on the river growing up and been out of boats messing with airplanes for the last 20 years or so.
Got a pontoon boat about 2 years ago and back on the river all the fun memories came back. forgot what I had been missing.
Fast forward to last year - ended up moving to south Mississippi and now it is too far to go for anything deep such as a large lake or river.
The next better thing I can find available here is the Leaf River. Shallow with sandy bottom with log jams, stumps and such. Watched some videos of air boats and look like fun but WAY to noisy :yell: no way to hold a civilized conversation cruising up the water.:argue:.........The skinny water jet boats look like what I want but with a sandy bottom I would guess I could tear up the jet in few hrs of horsing around.
So.....exhausting most of my hope I see few guys with surface drive long tail and beaver tail rigs go skinny but here again most of the industrial engine setups are pretty noisy and best I see have no reverse which I think I would like.
I noticed a few guys running skinny with a good ole egg beater....
Been thinking about getting a lightweight wide aluminum boat say 60" or more around 16 ft with a hydr. jack plate and building a small tunnel enough to squeeze some water up to the cooling intake and run a surface drive prop on something like 60-90Hp. What else will I need? what is the little wing fins that some guys run on each side of a tunnel setup? will I need to go that far?
How will it fair in the sand when I start dredging the bottom :flame:
Years gone by have had several boats but all my operations previously have been deep water skiing and such. Have had lots of fun on the river growing up and been out of boats messing with airplanes for the last 20 years or so.
Got a pontoon boat about 2 years ago and back on the river all the fun memories came back. forgot what I had been missing.
Fast forward to last year - ended up moving to south Mississippi and now it is too far to go for anything deep such as a large lake or river.
The next better thing I can find available here is the Leaf River. Shallow with sandy bottom with log jams, stumps and such. Watched some videos of air boats and look like fun but WAY to noisy :yell: no way to hold a civilized conversation cruising up the water.:argue:.........The skinny water jet boats look like what I want but with a sandy bottom I would guess I could tear up the jet in few hrs of horsing around.
So.....exhausting most of my hope I see few guys with surface drive long tail and beaver tail rigs go skinny but here again most of the industrial engine setups are pretty noisy and best I see have no reverse which I think I would like.
I noticed a few guys running skinny with a good ole egg beater....
Been thinking about getting a lightweight wide aluminum boat say 60" or more around 16 ft with a hydr. jack plate and building a small tunnel enough to squeeze some water up to the cooling intake and run a surface drive prop on something like 60-90Hp. What else will I need? what is the little wing fins that some guys run on each side of a tunnel setup? will I need to go that far?
How will it fair in the sand when I start dredging the bottom :flame:
